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Cinema and Poetry

Of course you can write poetry.You have thoughts about everything: life in
general, where you have been and where you never reached, depression, your
lousy government, poverty, smog in your city, the man or woman you love but can
never approach, your parents, kids that treat you like a slave, migrating
birds, being broke, happiness, anything.

Every living person is a poet.It’s only that you’ve never written it
down.No excuse though, not with these
digital things we carry which enable us to have all your documents in your hand
24/7.

Love Jones directed by Theodore Witcher, starring Nia Long
and Larenz Tate is a poetry film, so is Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family
Reunion.Boris Kodjoe and Lisa Arrindell
Anderson play characters attracted to each other.

He arranged for her to read her poems in these clubs in Atlanta
where people come up to the microphone and do their poetry thing.I wonder what they are called.Maybe I should call some airlines and check
out flights to Atlanta.

The beautiful thing about reading your work in public is
that it removes the insanity stigma. Writers are mad people.They think what they write will be read by
somebody.Who cares?Total insanity if you ask me.

Bollywood has hundreds of poetry films.Sahibaan, directed by Ramesh Talwar, starring
Madhuri Dixit and Sanjay Dutt is my favourite.Dutt played a lush, as in drunk, drunk, drunk and recites poetry
inspired by whoever is in his bed.

I don’t know what will inspire your first poem, but mine
happened on the train, the Toronto subway.When I first arrived in Harlem, New York and later Toronto Canada, I used
to see people who looked like Ma, my aunts, my friends, schoolmates I grew up with
in Africa.It was crazy.Being in the minority can be pretty cold when
you come from being the majority.

You become a poet when you let your fingers caress that
keyboard to immortalize what is on your mind.Sharing it with your FAMFRI (family and friends) is like throwing
diamonds into the sea.They normally
call you boring, senile or crazy.